Metal and hard rock reviews

Megadeth – Dystopia

I’m pleasantly surprised on the first listen, hey this doesn’t suck! Dave has reached into is anger and paranoia for concepts once again, thank god. Dave wrights his best music when he’s angry at someone or scared of something, however farfetched that something might be. Let’s just be thankful to Broderick and Drover for leaving the band and pissing him off once again.

The new guys are seasoned metal warriors. Kikos’ influence can be clearly heard one a few tracks. I’m not a big Angra fan, but I know a lot of their material and there is more than a few licks on Dystopia that has an Angra-esc style to it. Letting Kiko contribute right from the get go seems to be a good idea. The direction of the music is ever so slightly shifted. Every song on the album is easily recognizable as a Megadeth / Dave Mustaine song, but there is a little something different lurking on every track, something new and exciting.

The addition of Adler on drums had a lot of keyboard warriors all up in arms. Comments flying about Dave poaching the drummer of popular newer band to cash in that bands success, or how Megadeth finally had drummer worthy of following Menza and / or Samuelsen, presenting Adler as some sort of savior. The drumming could just as easily been laid down by Drover without me noticing. It’s solid drumming, but I really cant find any distinguishing features to set Adler apart from former drummers of Megadeth.

The album is definitely riff-heavy, there’s plenty of noodling going on in almost every segment, of every song. A song like the Emperor has no outstanding riff, but is jam-packed with ideas. I didn’t like this song very much the first time I heard, but it’s since grown on me. The banality and repetitiveness of the lyrics annoyed me at first, but I’ve got to admit that both song and melody is catchy as hell.

A real stand out track is Conquer or Die, and this is one of the songs you were can clearly hear Kikos influence. It starts out with latin guitar part and builds up the intensity before it explodes into a heavy song. There is a bunch of nice heavy songs on this album Fatal Illusions, Lying in State or Poisonous Shadow are the prime examples. Poisonous Shadow kind of stands out a bit from the other songs on the album and sounds a bit like it might have been originally conceived during the The World Needs a Hero sessions.

And once again Mustain is digging out some US centered political blabber. Post American World and Foreign Policies is just too American in their lyrical content for me. The lyrics seem ridiculous and sounds like conspiracy theories for a guy from northern Europe.